Sweet Maria's Weblog

We are receiving new coffees at a remarkable rate... Today we have available;

A new Peaberry lot of the excellent El Salvador Matalapa, as well as (coincidently) a new peaberry lot of the Poco Fundo Organic coffee from Brazil. And there are 3 new African lots (Ethiopia-Kenya-Kenya)!

In contrast to the Nicaragua Limoncillo from last week, this week's coffee was roasted to Full City to allow the roast flavors to become more prevalent. When we cupped the test roasts the lightest had some pungency and spiciness, not bad at all, however, we decided to go with the Full City sample as a guide since it brought a nice balance to the overall cup. We've been sticking with a similar profile in recent weeks which entails starting each batch at medium-low heat level and then incrementally raising the heat until the coffee nears first crack around 380 degrees and ten minutes into each roast. Then we lower the heat as low as possible without stalling the roast to extend the time the beans spend going through second crack and developing towards the end of the roast. For this particular coffee the final drop temperature was 440 degrees and the roasts averaged 16 minutes.

Sorry I'm over a week late with this post, things have been hectic around here with all the new coffees being added. This one was kept at a City + roast level to highlight the "lemon cookie" flavor Tom mentions in the review. Final temp. was 427 degrees with a sixteen minute average roast time. This coffee would taste good roasted to a few different levels so this is just a decision we made at the cupping table to let the origin character take center stage, so to speak.

In other big news this week, we were in on the Guatemala Cup of Excellence #1 Auction Lot, El Injerto Estate Pacamara, lot that went for north of $80/Lb. green in the auction. Stumptown did
the bidding and gets the majority of it, Kentaro Maruyama and his Mikatajuku group will offer it in Japan, and we get just one bag (154 Lbs). But oh what an expensive bag it will be, adding import
and transportation too... Ay Caramba! Still, it's shy of the +$100 we spent on Batch 2 at the Panama Esmeralda Gesha auction... sure makes these 4 new arrivals seem quite reasonable!